Mosaic Broken Hearts
by junnir
Summary: "It wasn't like she imagined, but this was real, and this was him, and this is all she needs for it to be perfect." / A retrospective look at various points of Bobbi and Hunter's relationship.


She twirls the keychain around her fingers, letting herself sink deep into her thoughts.

When her surroundings weren't ideal for her to dish out her staves, she'd settle for the keychain. Having something to keep her fingers busy helped her think. She needed this; she needed to think.

She had spent a good amount of time thinking – of him, of why they didn't work, of her commitments, but mostly of him. And sitting in the dark in the apartment they once shared – not for long, but those times were too unforgettable to be washed away like every other fleeting memory she had – twirling her staves would just remind her too much of the job she had chosen over him.

Those goddamned staves. Always helped to get her out of a sticky situation, but never helped when she needed him to stay.

She could've knocked him out, she muses, and it brings a mischievous grin onto her face. Maybe if she fought him and knocked him out cold, she could've coerced him into staying.

But that wasn't the wife she wanted to be. That wasn't the lover she wanted to be, not the violent and intolerable one. Not the one who tried to hold onto him when all he wanted to do was leave.

She let him go.

One of her biggest regrets till today, if you ask her, is that she never got to bring him to Franny's Saloon.

/

That wasn't the first time he walked out on her. He had stormed off plenty of times before, especially after they'd just been screaming their lungs out at each other. But he always came back.

Sure, he needed his whiskey break, and he needed to just get away before they let their fight escalate (because there are some things you may say that you can't take back, not ever), but nothing ever stopped him from slipping quietly past their creaky door (which he swore to one day patch up) and into the bed next to her.

Sometimes there'd be make-up sex, but sometimes it's just his arm finding its way around her waist for a firm hold onto her; the essence of what it meant to be them was that they always come back to each other.

Only, today, for the first time, he couldn't deny that he may never open that door himself again.

They fight a lot. And by 'a lot', on their terms, it really was a lot. But they've never once doubted each other, not in any way at all. Until today, when he feels his limits being stretched an inch too far. Until today, when he made her choose between him and her job.

The pavement outside their apartment building was going on too long by now. He'd been walking and walking, without even a hint that he'd turn back on his trail.

And for a moment there, he knew that this was it. Because in the past he'd still sneak glimpses behind him to see if she'd follow him out (she never does, but it never makes him love her any less). Today he was just storming ahead.

One day he'll look back on this moment, and when he finally feels up to it, he'd share exaggerated stories of his failed marriage and call this walk the Walk of Shame.

Because there was nothing to be proud of in walking away from a woman he will always love.

/

 _He's tracing circles on her back, and as clichéd as it sounds; it was actually pretty soothing to feel his warm breath on her exposed skin. Sometimes he sneaks light kisses in there – for her that tickles more than his fingers working their way around her back._

 _She has the ghost of a smile pulling at her lips. She lets her eyes wander around the dingy little room he called home, then lets them settle on the bedside table, where he had finally installed a small lamp, having been beseeched by her over a million times. Okay, maybe just over twenty – it's not like she really needed a lamp. She just wanted this place to feel more like a home. Especially if she was going to come by this many times in a week._

 _She has a few things on that table. Her badge – the pride of her being, the badge that signified her dream job (that had as many perks as it did flaws). Her keys – to her car, to her own house (which she hasn't been to in too long a while), to a miniature safe in her locker at the base, where she kept the most precious of mementos. There was a keychain that held the keys together. She finally lets the smile emerge on her countenance when she reminisces on the origins of that trinket._

 _She takes it into her own hands and begins playing around with it. The light sounds of metallic jingling followed, and soon she felt warmth of another kind on her back. He had scooted over closer to her on the bed; head peeking over her body, his chin digging gently into the crevice of her neck._

" _What's that?" his curious voice purrs, right next to her ear._

" _A keychain."_

" _Now," he bemoans softly, "is a keychain more interesting to you than the man lying beside you on a bed?"_

 _She lets a light laugh escape her parted lips. "That depends."_

" _On what?" He brings his lips down to the spot right below her ear. A sensitive spot, he knew. "Does being naked get me a few additional points?"_

 _She turns her head a little so that she could get his lips to not act out. "Not really," she whispers between kisses. "This little thing here makes me feel things you can't make me feel."_

" _Is that a kinky sex joke?" he muses._

 _She nibbles down on his lower lip, goes a little harder than intended to show her seriousness. "No."_

" _Careful there, love. I need my lips to sound like the sexy Englishman you're very much into, and you need my lips for… Other things."_

 _She laughs again. "Fine, Sexy Englishman."_

 _She turns back to look at the keychain, and he rests his chin on that same crevice of her neck, this time snaking an arm around her waist to pull her just a bit closer. "Care to tell me more?"_

" _What about?"_

" _This thing that's clearly much more interesting to you than I am."_

 _She lets a smile settle on her lips, and ponders over the right words to deliver. "I got it during one of my first few missions."_

" _Ah," he's using his smart-ass tone now, the one she hates, "and is it like a reminder for your roots?"_

" _You have quite the knack for making things sound dramatic," she quips._

" _It's one of the few things I do better than fighting and killing people," and he almost sounds proud of it._

 _When she doesn't go on, he decides she needs a gentle prompt. He reaches over with a free arm and brings the keychain, still entangled in her fingers, closer to his eyes. "Franny's Saloon," he enunciates._

" _That's the place," she says. "A bar, headed by its own round-bellied owner who sported a mean face but really had the kindest disposition ever. He was rather sexy, if you ask me."_

 _He grins. "So he gave you this?"_

" _He did. Said I was the prettiest one to come through those doors in a while. And that was before I tipped him for bringing me the best beer around."_

" _You're probably not the only pretty one to have received a token of appreciation, though."_

" _I don't have to be the only one," she teases. "I'm still special. Isn't that what you once told me?"_

" _Hey," he mouths, slightly defensive. "You know you really are the only one, right?"_

" _Whatever you say," she chuckles. "So he gave it to me, I finished my beer, left the bar, and about thirty minutes later I'm fighting about twenty in the alley."_

" _Oh, please. Twenty's nothing for you," he sneers._

" _Twenty's nothing for me now, but I wasn't this amazing all the time, you know. Besides, they were huge—and some had knives, others guns. I was clearly on the losing end."_

" _Oh, come on. You and your beloved organization; there was bound to be back-up, right?"_

" _Didn't come until much later. I was pretty much a goner by the time they got their asses there. I fought off most of them, but when the number dwindled and I was down to about three, one of them—had a gun—fired a shot that I didn't dodge in time for."_

 _He winces almost instinctively, as if the shot had gotten him. She suppresses the grin and keeps her lips flat. "Next thing I knew, agents were running in left and right and I couldn't even stand steady. I think I collapsed almost instantly, or something. The memory's a blur," she confesses in a small voice, "but I remember falling into a limbo of life and death."_

" _What was it like?" he asks, not even missing a beat. And it's pretty interesting, at least for her, because anyone else would've sniggered at the way she put it. A limbo of life and death? Laughable, until it actually happens to you. But for him, he believed her. He always did._

" _I was unconscious, but not really. Everything was dark. I heard some faint sounds of sirens and whatnot, and people spewing out buckets of medical jargon. I couldn't really feel anything, not the pain, not the blood gushing out from the wound, nothing. Except…" She twirls her keychain, and he laces his fingers with hers in response. Her breath hitches slightly._

" _Except this. It fell from my pocket, into my hand, I think, while I was being ushered away after the fight. And it's a little funny, a little weird too, because I couldn't feel anything, but I felt this. It was a piece of cold metal and my fingers were clutching onto it for dear life. Or, at least, that's what they told me after I came to."_

 _He turns to her, studying her face and her expression, and he caught the hint of some fresh tears welling up in her eyes, as well as the little smile that tugged at the corners of her lips. "It was the only thing that told me I was still alive, and that I was probably very lucky to still be at that instant." She breathes. "It kept me alive."_

 _Silence visits for a while and gets permission to stay. They needed the dust in the air to settle, especially after a moment like this, and he was more than content with holding her in the silence. She had numerous vivid memories running through her head, and she needed some time to sift out the good ones from the bad ones._

 _After a moment or two, he clears his throat with a quiet little cough. She turns to look at him, hearing his intention to speak._

" _So, this place; Franny's Saloon?"_

 _She nods gently._

 _He stares without even uttering a sound, before he breaks out into that familiar grin of his. "You're going to have to bring me there sometime, love."_

" _And why's that?"_

" _I dunno, it sounds like it's worth me checking out, don't you think? And I'd love to try out their whiskey," he answers plainly._

 _She knows there's more to his words, and so she continues looking at him. He notices her stare on him and looks down to make eye contact, and for a moment she sees something in his gaze she's never seen before._

 _He lowers himself to plant a chaste kiss on her lips, and when he pulls away, he very quietly whispers against them: "And I'm going to have to thank that man for giving you something that kept you alive."_

/

Bobbi's making her way down the hallway when she passes an open door. She comes to a stop outside the room and resists the urge to peek in.

Lance appears in the doorway less than a second later.

"Can I help you?"

"Just here to say hi."

"Well, hi. Job here's done, I don't have to show you to the door since you're already at it, goodbye."

She stares as he backs up, raising a hand to presumably shut the door on her face, but even so she can't get herself to walk away. He lowers the raised hand and studies her face for a while, then folds his arms across his chest. "No, really, can I help you?"

She swallows. "I didn't think there'd be a day when we'd be working here together."

He sighs. "People died. There's really no fun in earning big bucks when there's no one to share your joy of killing with."

Silence visits, but this time it's awkward and uncomfortable and puts both of them in tough spots. She shuffles on her feet and gives him a little nod before making to turn away.

That's when she sees the metal trinket sitting on his bed, a dark spot on an otherwise pearly white sheet.

She freezes, her eyes getting accustomed to the sight of the object she once held so dear to her heart. (She still does.)

He follows her gaze and realizes that she saw it. He doesn't really know what to say until he turns back to face her. "Do you want it back?"

She flinches at hearing his voice rouse her out of her trance. Then she lets his question sink in, before formulating a hasty reply. "No, it's yours."

"See, it's not. You gave it to me."

"I gave it to you," she repeats slowly, as if to emphasize the words. "So it's yours now."

He stares quietly before taking a step back again. "You didn't even give it to me personally."

And suddenly they're reminded of a dear friend who died, who really had a part to play in getting them together in the very first place, and suddenly there's a lot of memories and they're all getting jumbled and she has to look away from him in order to focus on the present situation.

When she doesn't say anything after a while, he closes the door on her. She doesn't move off for a while, and she wonders if he can still see her silhouette through the translucent glass door.

"It's not that I didn't, it's that I couldn't," she corrects, but no one was here to catch that.

/

 _It happens really quickly._

 _She'd be lying if she told you that she's never once imagined how it'd turn out to be._

 _How her first proposal would turn out._

 _She imagined flowers, a whole bouquet of them; she imagined a ring, not necessarily sporting a big rock on it, but still beautiful enough to sit on her finger as an eternal reminder of their love; she imagined him on one knee, spewing out sweet nothings and promising that this will be forever._

 _She only gets one out of the three._

 _And it's not even sweet nothings he's spewing out; it's lines he learned from a tacky romantic comedy she fell asleep during (but she was still awake enough to know he got his lines from there). They're from a badly written script too, because she can't help but to laugh when it gets too cheesy for her liking._

 _To his credit, though, he at least promises that this will be forever. And that's all she really needed to hear, before she says yes and lets him slip on the keychain on her finger (at least he remembered to remove the keys first) and they kiss and fall back against the couch in the apartment they started to share since a few months ago._

 _It wasn't like she imagined, but this was real, and this was him, and this is all she needs for it to be perfect._

/

They're walking into the base after a completed mission. While hanging up their combat vests and locking up their weapons, she hears the familiar metallic clanking and whips around to see him shove the bunch of keys into the back pocket of his trousers. He handles them with subtlety and genteel she doesn't see anywhere else. (Except she did; she saw it all the time back when his hands were on her, back when they were together and they couldn't keep their hands off each other.)

She sees him linger around to polish his pistols and she, too, lingers around, at least until everyone had left the room.

His back was still to her. She takes a deep breath and decides to take a leap of faith, decides to believe, and it's a decision that comes a little too late, because she should've believed in him, in them, when she had to the most. When she thought she couldn't make it work with him, but it was really her fear and insecurity speaking, and not her and her heart.

She approaches him and lets her feet come to a stop a few inches behind him. He puts down his pistol when he notices her presence and turns around to face her. He doesn't make to speak, so she does.

"Franny's Saloon," she says, hands vaguely gesturing to the keychain he has in his back pocket. When he doesn't show much of a reaction she swallows and tells herself to go on.

"I'm thinking it's time I brought you there."

He stares at her. His eyes are doing that thing they always do—when he's studying her carefully and quietly and his eyes are scanning past the walls she's built for herself.

After a moment of silence, she sees him visibly relax and she, too, lets out a breath she didn't even know she was holding.

There's a familiar grin on his face.

"About damn time."


End file.
